Žitomislić Monastery: A Serbian Orthodox Monastic and Educational Center in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.9
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Ottoman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page11 sections
History
Žitomislić Monastery is a Serbian Orthodox monastery in Bosnia and Herzegovina, located in the village of Žitomislići south of Mostar. Dedicated to the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God, the Christian feast commemorating the announcement to Mary that she would bear Jesus, it belongs to the Eparchy of Zahumlje and Herzegovina and the Littoral of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Its principal church was rebuilt in 1602–1603, placing the present foundation in the early modern period and linking it to the Hrabren–Miloradović noble family.
Origins and seventeenth-century rebuilding
The monastery’s earlier existence appears in Ottoman tax registers for the Bosnian Sanjak, an administrative district of the Ottoman Empire, in 1468–1469, and in the register for the Herzegovinian Sanjak in 1477. These records place the site before the Ottoman period and connect it with an older Hrabren family foundation or estate.
By 1566, the Orthodox church had fallen into ruin. The kadija of Nevesinje authorized its reconstruction on the condition that the new building should not exceed the former church in length or width. The permission was issued to the Hrabren voivodes Petar and Jovan, and the rebuilt church was completed in 1602–1603. Records from 1583 and 1599 name the monastery’s first abbot, Jovan, and Milisav Vukašinov of Crnići. A monastery seal carries the year 1585.
Wall painting was completed in 1609 under Abbot Sava, with the work and financial support of Hieromonk Maksim, a monk ordained as a priest. The decoration followed a Greek artistic model. During the seventeenth century, monks from Žitomislić also served as abbots of Hilandar, the important Serbian Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos. The brotherhood continued to exercise influence among the Serbian population of the Neretva valley for centuries.
Schools and family memory
A theological school opened at the monastery in 1848. Founded by Archimandrite Serafim Perović and Nićifor Dučić, it was described as the first school of its kind in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A literacy school for Serbian children was later established and continued until 1971.
The monastery also remained associated with the Miloradović family. In 1883, Count Gligorij Miloradović, a Russian major general, visited the site as the land of his ancestors and installed a memorial plaque. In April 1927, King Alexander I Karađorđević donated a 300-kilogram bell to the church.
Wartime destruction and reconstruction
In June 1941, Ustaše forces killed the monastery’s entire brotherhood and threw the bodies into Vidonjska Pit on the right bank of the Neretva. Several monks were also among the Serbian civilians massacred at Šurmanci on the opposite bank. The monastery was left deserted. Later that year, Ustaše and German forces looted the treasury, archive, and library, then burned the monastic residences. The church survived that attack, while the refectory, the communal dining room, was also burned during the wartime assaults.
On 3 February 1991, the relics of the Žitomislić New Martyrs were ceremonially buried at the monastery. New Martyrs are Christians honored as martyrs who suffered during a later period of persecution. Several weeks before the 1992 attack, the sisterhood, led by Abbess Evpraksija and its spiritual father, Abbot Jovan Nedić, fled to Dokmir Monastery near Ub. Evpraksija died in 2007.
In mid-1992, during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatian or Bosnian-Croat forces burned and demolished the monastery, killing several monks. HOS formations under Blaž Kraljević were specifically associated with the attack, while HVO troops were also reported to have used bulldozers during the destruction. In 1993, the ruins were blown up with dynamite, and mines were laid across the grounds and access road. The property consequently remained an inaccessible military-restricted area for several years after the 1995 peace settlement.
Mine clearance allowed reconstruction to begin on 8 April 2002. The church and monastery buildings were rebuilt between 2003 and 2005, and Serbian Patriarch Pavle consecrated them in May 2005. At a 2005 assembly at Žitomislić, the Serbian Orthodox Church canonized the priests Milorad Maca Vukojičić and Slobodan Šiljak. A military court had convicted and executed them in 1945, but Montenegro’s Constitutional Court annulled the judgment on 22 May 2005 as unconstitutional and unlawful, rehabilitating the priests posthumously. Žitomislić Monastery was designated a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Remains
The monastery stands on the eastern bank of the Neretva in Žitomislići, south of Mostar. The river forms the boundary with the neighboring municipality of Čitluk to the west. The present complex occupies a site containing the ruins of an older monastic complex. Its principal building is the Church of the Annunciation, accompanied by reconstructed monastic buildings that replaced residences destroyed in 1941 and in the destruction of 1992–1993.
Church structure and decoration
Church fabric and wall paintings
The church contains a surviving inscription by the master Vukašin of Orahovica, carved on the capital of the southern column during the 1602–1603 reconstruction. Inside, wall paintings completed in 1609 follow a Greek artistic model. The reconstructed church preserves the architectural and devotional focus of the monastery complex.
Iconostasis and commemorative features
The iconostasis, the screen separating the sanctuary from the nave and carrying icons and liturgical doors, was made in 1710 by the icon painter Mihailo. A founder’s portrait of Milisav Hrabren, showing him holding a representation of the church in his right hand, was formerly placed beside the doorway on the left side of the nave. A nineteenth-century description also noted an inscription on a small column beside the episcopal throne identifying the Hrabren family as founders.
The southern wall of the narthex, the church entrance vestibule, bears a memorial plaque with the Miloradović family coat of arms and an inscription commemorating Count Gligorij Miloradović’s visit in 1883. The church bell donated in 1927 bears an inscription identifying King Alexander I of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes as its donor.
Library, treasury, and icons
Books and manuscript tradition
In the mid-nineteenth century, the church possessed a Gospel and eight other church books brought from Russia. A note dated 1703 in the Gospel states that the Russian monarch Peter sent the books to Žitomislić through Gavro and Mihail, the sons of Ilija Miloradović. The monastery library once held an extensive collection, including monthly liturgical books and Pentecostaria, which contain services for the period from Easter through the Sunday after Pentecost. Monks copied manuscripts there during the first half of the seventeenth century. A service book copied at Žitomislić in 1706 is now held by the British Library in London.
Treasury and icon collection
The treasury contained mainly goldsmiths’ work made in Herzegovinian and Sarajevo workshops during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among its foreign objects was a hand-worked silver cross bearing a Crucifixion, donated from Moscow in 1865. The monastery also possessed a relatively unified icon collection, consisting mainly of Russian icons from the eighteenth through the late nineteenth century, together with some local and late Greek works. The collection is also described as including icons dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.
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